WATERBURY – The Vermont State Police has a new dedicated squad of six investigators who will take the lead on the biggest crimes that are committed in the state and they will look for answers to old, unsolved murders and missing persons' cases.

The new major crimes unit began operating earlier this month with a lieutenant leading it and five experienced investigators spread across the state, said Major Glenn Hall, the head of the Bureau of Criminal Investigation.

"This unit will provide a focus on the most serious crimes that we deal with," Hall said. "It will provide a group of experienced detectives that their primary job function is to work on the most serious crimes we deal with, specifically homicide, suspicious deaths, (and) officer-involved shootings.

Another key reason for forming the new unit is to have a group of experienced investigators who can focus on cold cases, which previously had been handled by local detectives in their spare time.

"We want to provide the best possible investigative resources on these cases," said Hall. "They are essentially the cases that have the biggest impact on families of victims as well as the community members that live in the communities where they happen."

A shell casing being examined at the state police lab in Waterbury.(Photo: Wilson Ring/AP)

The unit got its first case earlier this month, a week earlier than its planned launch, with the Westminster stabbing death of a 37-year-old Bellows Falls man, said state police Lt. Kraig LaPorte, the commander of the new unit. A Westminster man is facing manslaughter charges in that case.

Now members of the unit are looking through the old cases, checking to see which ones they should focus on first.

"It's exciting work," LaPorte said.

"We're interested in all of them, but obviously we can't take every case first," LaPorte said.

The idea of a major crimes unit has been around for years. No new people have been hired; instead the criminal division was restructured.

When big cases arise, the major crimes detectives won't be the only troopers working on those cases. As needed the major crimes detectives will work with other branches of the state police, such as local detectives, the crime scene search unit, the forensic laboratory, local detectives, the narcotics division, computer crimes and the intelligence center.

One of the first chores of the unit will be to compile accurate lists of the state's unsolved homicides and missing person cases. There are more than 30 missing persons cases and more than 50 unsolved homicides, some of which date back decades, Hall said.

"These cold cases are really about a tremendous amount of investigative time that needs to go into going through each case, each document in the case, each piece of evidence," Hall said.

Much of the evidence is contained in 3-ring binders or on cassette tapes that need to be converted to digital formats so they can be preserved.